four walls
by TrappedGenius
Summary: Post Season 9 domestic 'verse in which Team Free Will live (relatively) normal lives and Cas and Dean fall in love. Destiel fluff.


**New story during what will be most stressful months of my life so far? Sounds great!**

**So, this should be fun. ****Feel free to leave me a review!**

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Dean never thought he'd be able to live a normal life.

Okay, maybe his life wasn't your average picket-fence-and-two-point-five-kids-all-American- dream, but no longer was it demons-and-angels-and-every-evil-creature-you-coul d-possibly-think-of.

After they had returned the angels to Heaven and sent Abaddon and her crew of black-eyed dicks back to Hell (and locked the doors), Dean had what Sam called a "mid-life crisis". He buried himself in cases, finding every possible creature he could in the country – and with the demons gone, they weren't exactly in abundance – denying offers of help from Sam, Charlie and Cas.

At the time he told himself he was just doing his job, but as Cas pointed out in a freezing cold park in Massachusetts at two in the morning, Dean was afraid of living a normal life, and so was doing everything he could to stop that from happening. Anyway, that was a different story.

Two months later they moved out of the bunker. 'They' being himself, Sam, and Cas. Dean was scared, at first, far more scared than hunting something murderous and evil had ever made him, but it felt annoyingly and almost sickeningly right. It felt right to argue with Sam about stupid things like buying eggs and paying gas bills. It felt right to sit on the couch next to Cas, to watch the way the former angel turned the page of a worn copy of The Lord of the Flies, eyes squinting to see the text he could easily read if he only wore the glasses he insisted he didn't need. It felt right for Dean's stomach to swoop in a not unpleasant way when Cas turned and met his gaze with a smile-

Yes. He was happy.

They still went hunting occasionally, of course, but they never looked for it. It still found them from time to time, a vampire coven the next state over, a ghoul an hour's drive away. Nothing serious, nothing apocalypse-worthy. And Dean _liked _it.

He liked it, but that didn't mean that it wasn't too much, sometimes.

It was like when he was living with Lisa – although he couldn't really compare now to when he was living with Lisa – every so often he would feel suffocated, like the four walls of the house (or rather, his home that he owned and slept in every night and didn't even keep a gun and holy water under his pillow and had weird kitsch teapots that Cas was obsessed with lining the kitchen wall oh god they had dozens of freaking teapots) were closing in.

When that happened, Cas would drag him into the Impala – teaching him how to drive had been one of the first things Dean did - and drive somewhere far away where they both could breathe. They would sit on the ground, looking up at a starlit sky, and just… be.

Sam had always been good at the living part of life, but Cas understood. He knew what it was like to feel trapped within the walls, especially since he'd only been human for barely a year, and, as he had confessed to Dean on such a trip, he still felt trapped in his own (or rather Jimmy's) body sometimes.

Tonight was one of those nights. Dean had felt it building up for weeks now, starting with something that felt almost like an itch you just couldn't scratch, and growing and growing until he was yelling at Cas for some stupid little thing that didn't even matter.

And that's how they got to where they were now, sat in silence as the dimly lit road stretched out further in front of them.

Dean turned to look at Cas. His knuckles were white from gripping the wheel, his mouth a hard line and his expression unreadable.

He really messed up this time. "I'm sorry."

Cas's grip loosened slightly, but he said nothing.

"Dammit Cas, I didn't-"

"I know, Dean." He sighed. "You know I understand."

Dean knew Cas was telling the truth, but that didn't stop the guilt bubbling up inside of him at the thought of the way the man had flinched, eyes widening, before hauling his ass outside.

The car came to a sudden halt, and Cas let his head drop back against the seat. "I just don't know why you can't tell me instead of taking out your frustration on me or Sam. It's fine to be frustrated, Dean, but why can't you just _tell _me?"

He didn't have an answer. Or maybe he did, and he just didn't want to think it. "Come on," he said gruffly, stepping out into the cold night air.

He didn't have to look to know Cas would follow him, and indeed, after a moment, Cas followed Dean across the overgrown grass to where he sat, ignoring the fact that it was cold and wet and not very comfortable.

Both men sat looking up at the sky, silence filled by rickets chirped in the distance.

And this is what stopped Dean from driving off and never coming back, and maybe it was a little… Weird, but dammit if he could care less.

"I could never tire of looking at the stars," Cas murmured. "All of my Father's creations are beautiful, but the stars – the stars of the most beautiful of all."

Dean watched as Cas closed his eyes for a moment as a slow smile spread across his face. Dammit. That was not supposed to make his heart pound against it ribcage as if it were trying to escape his chest. He wasn't a teenage girl, for God's sake.

"Tell me their names," Dean said quietly.

Cas opened his eyes, the stars trapped in the pools of blue gazing up at the ones dotting the darkness. "I tell you them all the time. You always forget."

He grinned. "Okay, man, fair enough. Then tell me something else."

Cas's brow furrowed. "Like what?"

"Anything," he answered, shifting so they were sitting side by side, heat burning in the place where their arms brushed.

Cas stayed quiet, and after a while Dean looked over at him. His body was tense, the sleeves of the old leather jacket he wore hiding the fingers curled into the palm of his hands. He did that sometimes, pulling the sleeves of the jacket tight over his fists when he was worried or upset. Dean never used to pick up on those sorts of things, but with Cas it was different.

"Hey," he said quietly, gently lifting the other man's hand and pulling back the sleeve. He could feel Cas staring at him, the blue eyes piercing his skin in a way that made him feel dizzy. "You're, uh," he coughed. "You're going to ruin the sleeves doing that, man."

He went to move his hand away as Cas grabbed it in his own, interlocking their fingers and resting them upon the dewy grass. Dean's eyes flew up to look at his face, watching the way Cas stared at their entwined fingers, looking just as surprised as he was.

Arm suddenly feeling a lot heavier, he looked back up at the stars. Perhaps, if they were somewhere else, he would have pulled away as if he had been burnt, questions of what this meant and what they were racing through his head, but somehow here none of that mattered.

After a while he felt Cas relax beside him. Dean could almost hear him breathing, or perhaps he was only imaging that he could.

"You see the bright, yellow light? That's Capella," Cas pointed with his free arm. "It's one of the brightest in the sky, brighter than the sun…"

Cas continued naming every star they could see, even the ones Dean couldn't. And even though Dean told Cas there was no freaking way he was going to watch the sunrise with him like they were in a bad 90's movie, that's exactly what they did.


End file.
